In The News

Bridges to Somewhere

Justin Yifu Lin September 15, 2011
Following the financial crisis of 2008, the developed world still faces weak growth prospects and dim employment forecasts, and leaders in the US and Europe urge debt reduction. In this Foreign Policy article, Justin Yifu Lin of the World Bank makes a strong case for global infrastructure initiative, encouraging developed countries to invest billions of dollars on infrastructure projects at home...

How Global Investors Make Money Out of Hunger

Horand Knaup, Michaela Schiessl, Anne Seith September 6, 2011
Traders, intent on making money, increasingly rely on products always in demand: food commodities. Record sums are being invested in commodities. “Agricultural commodities attract investors who are no more interested in grain than they were previously in dot-com companies or subprime mortgages,” explains a team from Spiegel Online. The result is fast-rising food prices, reports the UN Food and...

The Great Failure of Globalization

Jeffrey Sachs August 24, 2011
US and European leaders are in denial over realities of global capital markets and competition from Asia, contends Jeffrey Sachs, director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University. Sachs argues that rapid globalization, responsible for the sharp economic decline of the west, has disproportionately hurt the unskilled and middle class while benefiting the wealthy. “The path to recovery now...

With US on the Brink of Default, Eyes are on Rating Agencies

David Dapice July 26, 2011
Governments have long operated by borrowing, not just for long-term projects but also daily operations. The US, with a self-imposed debt ceiling, borrows more than 40 cents for every dollar it spends. With the government about to exceed spending limits, global investors are on edge, waiting to see if the US Congress lifts the current debt ceiling, allowing continued operations, or goes into...

How Seawater Can Power the World

Stewart C. Prager July 14, 2011
Securing future energy sources will follow the path of past examples – through the long, hard work of scientific discovery that is so often a gamble. “[A]bundant, safe and clean energy source once thought to be the stuff of science fiction is closer than many realize: nuclear fusion,” writes Stewart C. Prager, Princeton physicist, in an opinion essay for the New York Times. But billions of...

India Must Tread Carefully in Africa

James Lamont May 31, 2011
Since the mid-17th century, spurred by colonialism, Indians have crossed the Indian Ocean for jobs and trade in the nations of eastern and southern Africa. Yet once-isolated China quickly caught up during the past two decades, forming deep connections over commodities trading, economic development and political summits, explains James Lamont in the Financial Times,. During a May trip to Ethiopia...

A Future Scenario for Asia

Philip Bowring May 12, 2011
Asia accounts for 27 percent of the global economy and nearly 60 percent of the world’s population. Analysts anticipate growth and influence, but labels of an Asian Century could be premature, warns an Asian Development Bank report, analyzed by Philip Bowring for the Asia Sentinel. Asia has capacity for economic supremacy, the report maintains, but not certainty. Countries tend to fall into a “...